Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/21725
open mic Templates, Styles and Themes in Office 2007 and Beyond Like you, I have known about the power of styles for many years. Without a third-party app to implement styles, they were a bit much for the average user — until Office 2007. After having spent some time in the trenches I have uncovered some relatively easy ways to roll out Word’s native styles. First I developed some “Style Sets” — these are basically blank .dotx files that have styles configured exactly the way you like them — one template for each of the different outline numbering schemes, for example. I gave the templates names like “CWS I,A,1,a,etc.dotx” and “CWS 1, 1.1, 1.1.1, etc.dotx.” The fonts for all the styles I defined were +Body or +Heading (this allows the use of themes — explained later). They are also all “Based on” normal. I redefined the existing Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. in each template and added some useful styles like “double indent.” Once completed, I pushed these files out to %userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\ QuickStyles\ (We run Windows XP). The Quickstyle is available from the style dropdown on the Home ribbon — FINALLY it is EASY to bring in pre-defined style sets to a new or existing document. I gave them all a normal.dotx extension where the styles had been set the way we like them, all black fonts (+Heading or +Body) and no numbering defined for the headings. Themes are new to Office 2007, and I created two of them. In particular, I changed the font in the themes — one uses Arial, one uses Times New Roman. In both, all font colors are black. If I use a style set from above and I change the Theme (found on the Page Setup tab), it will automatically change all the styles to either Times New Roman or Arial. The themes are installed wherever your workgroup template location is. Advanced Microsoft Office Documents 2007 Edition Inside Out by Stephanie Krieger was very helpful and went into many more details. While I figured out the ideas above, it was not spelled out in the book. The details of the “pieces” are covered in the book. My task is to go into all my existing Word templates and import my basic style set so they will be available going forward. I also intend to change them to reflect the +Body/+Heading fonts in the existing styles. Tim Hooks Director of Information Technology Chester Willcox and Saxbe LLP www.iltanet.org ILTA’s Greatest Hits 21 ARTICLE TITLE